This study uses appraisal theory to investigate the media attitudinal variations in the context of the recent 2013 air pollution incident in China. Drawing upon the appraisal systems of attitude and engagement, this article examines how the reportage has changed over time in terms of the type and source of attitude. Through a comparative analysis of the news reports and editorials in the latest and back issues of the official English-language newspaper China Daily, this article identifies two major attitudinal shifts: (...) 1) from an absence of inscribed attitude representing air quality as something natural to negative judgement of social sanction judging foreign embassies’ monitoring; 2) from judgement to three interwoven strands of appreciation, with the air quality, Western experience and prospective opportunities evaluated by both Chinese and international communities. When reporting and commenting on environmental issues of global concern, the national media voice may seek to achieve attitudinal consensus with the international community while adhering to the official discourse. (shrink)

This review explored the investigations on the role of teacher immediacy in English as a Foreign Language learners’ foreign language enjoyment. Earlier investigations have proved that teacher immediacy, such as posture, body language, vocal variety, gestures, and smile, can significantly affect learners’ positive emotions like foreign language enjoyment. It means that teachers should try both to control the feelings of their learners and manage their feelings to enhance enjoyment among learners. Moreover, studies have shown that teacher immediacy (...) is significantly related to learner motivation which is a basis for increasing foreign language enjoyment among learners. However, specific strategies can be employed to increase learner motivation, which in return increases learner foreign language enjoyment. Furthermore, the study presented the implications and future directions of this line of research for different people, such as EFL teachers, teacher educators, and foreign language scholars. The ideas can improve their awareness of teacher-student relationships, in particular, teacher immediacy and its role in learners’ foreign language enjoyment. (shrink)

Recent scholarship on the philosophy of time in pre-Qin Daoist thought has not yet produced a thorough examination of dao’s relationship to time. This essay resolves this omission through a systematic study of the concept heng 恒 in pre-Qin Daoist literature. While principally expressing the ‘constancy’ of dao, heng also significantly presupposes dao’s ability to change. This change is characterized in the texts as a cyclical movement of ‘return’ and identified with the universe’s circular metanarrative of generation and reintegration. The (...) essay turns to examine pre-Qin Daoist literature’s use of primal wu 無 metaphors to describe dao. It concludes that they present dao as undifferentiated infinitude, liberating dao as heng from the tense structure of past-present-future that divides life in time. These metaphors further associate the movement of dao with the flow of time, reformulating time’s relentless ever-greater advancement into an endless cycle of creative transformation. (shrink)

We explore the nature of forgetting in a corpus of 125,000 students learning Spanish using the Rosetta Stone® foreign-language instruction software across 48 lessons. Students are tested on a lesson after its initial study and are then retested after a variable time lag. We observe forgetting consistent with power function decay at a rate that varies across lessons but not across students. We find that lessons which are better learned initially are forgotten more slowly, a correlation which likely reflects (...) a latent cause such as the quality or difficulty of the lesson. We obtain improved predictive accuracy of the forgetting model by augmenting it with features that encode characteristics of a student's initial study of the lesson and the activities the student engaged in between the initial and delayed tests. The augmented model can predict 23.9% of the variance in an individual's score on the delayed test. We analyze which features best explain individual performance. (shrink)

Contents include Language as a Means of Mental Culture and International Communication (1853; 2 vols) by Claude Marcel; The Mastery of Languages, or the Art of Speaking Foreign Tongues Idiomatically (1864) by Thomas Prendergast; Introduction to the Teaching of Living Languages without Grammar or Dictionary (1874) by Lambert Sauveur; and The Art of Teaching and Studying Languages (1880; English translation 1892) by Francois Goiun.

This paper discusses some aspects of foreign language learning within the divided school system of Northern Ireland. It is argued that an improvement of foreign language learning must be seen in a socio‐cultural context whereby a change in attitudes to languages in general, including Irish, may lead not only to a balanced interest among girls and boys in the language classroom, but also to a more tolerant approach to the cultural differences among the Catholic and Protestant communities.

The present research explored how foreign language listening anxiety affected Chinese university students' English listening test performance and how proficiency and gender mediated the effects of FLLA on the latter. Two different populations from two universities in China answered the 20-item Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale as well as a demographic questionnaire and took an English listening test. Analyses of the collected data revealed the following major findings: Five latent factors underlay the FLLAS, when working alone, FLLA significantly (...) negatively predicted students' English listening test performance, and when working with proficiency and gender, English proficiency level, gender and FLLAS2 significantly predicted students' English listening test performance. These findings confirm the negative effects of FLLA on students' English listening test performance. They also indicate that English proficiency and gender mediate FLLA's effects on the latter, with English proficiency not only directly but also indirectly affecting the latter. (shrink)

The traditional evaluation methods of foreign language communication skills cannot deal with emotional information in the process of communication. Psychologists believe that a real personalized evaluation system should be smart. Based on the emotion network technology of artificial emotion intelligence, aiming at the shortcomings of the traditional evaluation system, this paper puts forward a new language ability evaluation system with certain emotion judgment function. The system can easily obtain and identify emotions in foreign communication, and can also carry (...) out individual learning at the cognitive and emotional levels on the basis of comprehensive analysis of emotions and communication effects. (shrink)

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the association of foreign language use and religiosity to moral decision-making in the context of a realistic set of scenarios about the COVID-19 pandemic. We used the CNI model in which four variants of a single dilemma manipulated norms and consequences, which are the defining characteristics of deontology and utilitarianism, respectively. A secondary purpose of the study was to investigate the role of in-group versus out-group membership in shaping moral judgment. (...) 461 participants responded to COVID-19 scenarios either in their native language (Persian) or foreign language (English). Contrary to findings of prior research on moral judgment, the results of the current study indicated that those using their native language showed more sensitivity to consequences compared to those using a foreign language and that less religious individuals were more likely to endorse norms compared to more religious participants. These unexpected findings may be attributed either to the use of more realistic scenarios or to some problems associated with the use of the CNI model. Further, participants’ responses did not significantly differ as a result of group membership, but in line with prior research, exploratory analyses revealed that men showed greater sensitivity to consequences. (shrink)

The present longitudinal survey study explored changes in and effects of foreign language classroom anxiety and listening anxiety on Chinese undergraduate students’ English proficiency over a semester in the COVID-19 context. A set of 182 matching questionnaires was collected from first-year undergraduate English as a foreign language learners at two time points of a 16-week semester. Analyses of the data revealed the following major findings: the participants experienced high levels of FLCA and FLLA both at the beginning and (...) end of the semester, neither of which changed significantly during the semester, FLCA and FLLA were highly positively related to each other, FLCA and FLLA significantly predicted students’ self-rated proficiency in listening and speaking English, and confidence in using English, efforts and motivation to learn English and interaction with instructors and peers mediated FLCA and FLLA to exert effects on students’ self-perceived proficiency in listening and speaking English. These findings indicate that the learning environment is critical in influencing the levels of and changes in FLCA and listening anxiety and that these two types of foreign language anxiety are serious issues in the pandemic foreign language learning context. (shrink)

The field of second language acquisition (SLA) is by nature of its subject a highly interdisciplinary area of research. Learning a (foreign) language, for example, involves encoding new words, consolidating and committing them to long-term memory, and later retrieving them. All of these processes have direct parallels in the domain of human memory and have been thoroughly studied by researchers in that field. Yet, despite these clear links, the two fields have largely developed in parallel and in isolation from (...) one another. The present article aims to promote more cross-talk between SLA and memory science. We focus on foreign language (FL) attrition as an example of a research topic in SLA where the parallels with memory science are especially apparent. We discuss evidence that suggests that competition between languages is one of the mechanisms of FL attrition, paralleling the interference process thought to underlie forgetting in other domains of human memory. Backed up by concrete suggestions, we advocate the use of paradigms from the memory literature to study these interference effects in the language domain. In doing so, we hope to facilitate future cross-talk between the two fields and to further our understanding of FL attrition as a memory phenomenon. (shrink)

The present study aimed at investigating the motivational factors affecting Iranian learners’ learning of English as a Foreign Language across differing levels of language proficiency. To this end, 110 males and 70 females with an age range of 18–31 took part in the study and a mixed-methods approach was adopted. First, the researchers administered Oxford Placement Test to determine the proficiency level of the participants and placed them into three levels of language proficiency. Elementary, intermediate, and advanced. Next, as (...) for the quantitative part of the study, the Attitude/Motivation Test Battery questionnaire was distributed among all the participants to delve into the motivational factors. Finally, a semi-structured interview was conducted to qualitatively probe into EFL learners’ motivational factors affecting their learning of English. It was found that the motivational factors which encouraged EFL learners resulted from either intrinsic or extrinsic tendencies. The recognized intrinsically-based motivational factors were personal enjoyment, social prestige, and being challenged. The extrinsically-oriented factors as the source of motivation to learn English were getting a job, pursuing education, earning more money, traveling to foreign countries, pursuing academic careers, making efficient use of technology, and effectively interacting with native speakers. It was concluded that beginner and intermediate English language learners tended to learn English more based on extrinsic factors whereas advanced learners were found to be more intrinsically motivated. (shrink)

The paper deals with the need for new methods in foreign language teaching to students of non-linguistic universities. The article presents a strategy to optimize the foreign language lesson. As an example an algorithm with authentic technical text in German is considered. It makes possible to change the work with foreign language text. It is proposed to substitute the standard tasks to the practice-oriented, which purpose is to teach students to understand the text.

In the past half century, the research on emotions of foreign language learners has shifted the focus from an exclusive analysis of negative emotions to a more holistic study of both negative emotions and positive emotions, and currently to mediators of multiple emotions. Of the FLL’s negative emotions, foreign language anxiety attracts the most attention. Researchers have widely discussed the relationship between FLA and foreign language achievement, the influencing factors of FLA, the dynamicity of FLA as well (...) as regulation and intervention strategies of FLA. Foreign language enjoyment is the most heavily studied research subject on FLL’s positive emotions. Researchers generally focus on the influencing factors of FLE, the dynamicity of FLE and the relationship between FLE and FLA. With the implementation of holistic education, emotional intelligence, a mediator of multiple emotions of FLL, has been becoming a newly hot topic in the field of FLL’s emotions. By reviewing the previous studies, this paper proposes that the future research on FLL emotion needs to expand the research perspectives, enrich the research topics, and innovate the research methods. (shrink)

Considering the transformation of educational scenarios, we recognize the need to train foreign language teachers with high pedagogical, research, and technological skills. This recognition considers the new challenges of education and aligns with the educational discourses and commitments that are shaped by the curricular proposals of foreign language programs in higher education. It is necessary to know the level of competencies of teacher trainers, university lecturers, to identify possible ongoing training needs. This research uses a mixed-methods design with (...) an exploratory-descriptive approach that contributes to the educational instructions to start continuous training plans for their teachers under the policies, global dynamics, and demands of education. The research shows that there are still challenges to confront, as teachers still have opportunities to strengthen their pedagogical, educational, and new technology competencies. This is a challenge that institutions should address in the rigorous implementation of lifelong learning programs. (shrink)

The purpose of this review study is to explore the existing research focusing on the impact of foreign language learning among healthy seniors on their cognitive functions from the positive psychology perspective. The methods are based on a literature review of available sources found on the research topic in two acknowledged databases: Web of Science and Scopus. The search period was not limited by any time period since there are not many studies on this topic. Altogether seven original studies (...) were detected. The findings of this review study thus reveal that foreign language learning (FLL) has a positive impact on the maintenance and/or enhancement of cognitive abilities irrespective of age. In addition, the FLL courses seem to offer new opportunities for healthy seniors in the area of socializing and integration into society, which consequently may positively affect their overall well-being. Furthermore, the research shows that it is partly through the stimulation of social well-being that the cognitive effects of FLL might be observed. Cognitive aspects of older age are to be further investigated, including the importance of learning a foreign language, as basically all research conducted proves at least some maintenance or even improvement of cognitive functions of older people when starting intensive language training. (shrink)

Positive psychology has recently seen unprecedented rise and has reached vast achievements in the area of quality of life improvement. The purpose of this study is to show that there are different aspects of well-being that make healthy older people motivated to learn a foreign language at a later age. The research was conducted in the Czech Republic and Poland in two groups of learners aged 55 years and more. The experimental group consisted of 105 Czech respondents who were (...) targeted with an online questionnaire with the aim to determine the level of FLL outcomes connected to QoL in healthy older adults in their L2 acquisition. The second experimental group was established of Polish seniors who attended similar language courses. The findings of the research clearly show that FLL has an irreplaceable role as one of several non-pharmacological strategies utilized to improve the aging process and reduce drawbacks of aging. The results indicate that seniors' overall satisfaction and subjective feelings of well-being are enormously high when attending foreign language classes at older age. FLL, therefore, creates an environment that can enhance QoL of older adults that can be supplemented by other means such as well-balanced diet, other social activities, sport and physical activity, music, or computer games. All these intervention methods can significantly improve QoL of older adults and the parties engaged and/or responsible for taking care of older generation should take it into serious consideration. (shrink)

Source: Author: Liliya Ponomaryova, Elena Osadcha The problems of forming phonetic skills of the German language which is studied on the basis of the English language have been considered. The aim of this research is to make the comparative analysis of the phonetic aspects of the foreign languages that are taught one after another. There has been the attempt to analyze, generalize and systematize the material on the given topic which is presented in works in German, English, Ukrainian (...) and Russian on the main theoretical questions connected with the process of teaching the second foreign language. It was shown that while forming phonetic skills in German, it is necessary to give the characteristics to the phonetic, rhythmic and intonation peculiarities of both German and English; to point out the difficulties of mastering the pronunciation system of German, to develop the introductory course and the material for phonetic warming-up and to work out the algorithm of introducing a new sound. ]]>. (shrink)

The research shows the relationship between digital teaching competence and foreign language learning in students at a national university from Lima. It is a non-experimental descriptive study with a cross-sectional correlational design, applied to a sample of 151 students from Enrique Guzmán y Valle National University of Education. To collect data for the first variable, it was built a questionnaire with the response parameters of the Likert scale. Based on the Cronbach's Alpha test, this instrument reached a reliability index (...) of 0,780. For the second variable, a test was applied and the reliability level was measured through the Kuder-Richardson coefficient, showing an index of 0,865, so it is inferred that these instruments had a high level of reliability. About the general hypothesis, Spearman's correlation coefficient was 0,705, a high positive correlation. The investigation result allows to confirm that there is a direct and significant association between teaching digital competence and foreign language learning, that is, the higher the level of teaching digital competence, the better the learning achievements of the students. (shrink)

Emotional attenuation in a second language is believed to be one of the main causes of the Moral Foreign Language effect (MFLe). However, evidence on the mediating role of emotion in the relationship between language and moral judgements is limited and mainly derives from unrealistic moral dilemmas. We conducted two studies to investigate (1) whether the MFLe is present in both unrealistic (Study 1) and realistic (Study 2) moral dilemmas, and (2) whether this effect can be attributed to reduced (...) emotionality. In Study 1, the MFLe was found in the moral judgements made by Spanish-English bilinguals. However, the same pattern was not observed in Greek Cypriot-English bilinguals’ moral judgements, and this result was attributed to the prominent role of English in Cyprus. In Study 2, the MFLe extended to realistic moral dilemmas when the outcome of the action entailed the violation of a social norm. Study 1 and Study 2 also revealed that these bilinguals experienced a wide range of emotions in their L1 and L2, which did not differ significantly across languages. Mediation analyses further indicated that the MFLe was not mediated by emotional blunting, which made us consider alternative explanations for the MFLe. (shrink)

This study examines the complex dynamics of communication in the changing field of journalism influenced by the use of media. It specifically focuses on how thoughts and perceptions are expressed in this evolving landscape. Information and communication technologies significantly influence journalism by rapidly disseminating news, updates, and societal impacts. Utilizing critical discourse analysis, the study aims to reveal systematic language usages and uncover latent meanings beyond news texts. Focused on the 2023 Turkish Presidential Election, news texts from four prominent international (...) newslets Al Jazeera, BBC, CNN, and Euronews are analyzed. The comprehensive analysis of international media coverage investigates the interplay of linguistic and thematic choices in shaping narratives. With a dual focus on macro and micro levels of discourse, the study uncovers diverse approaches among foreign media outlets. Each outlet adopts a distinctive thematic approach at the macro level, emphasizing key figures and sociopolitical contexts. Al Jazeera spotlights competition, BBC underscores post-election polarization, CNN focuses on Erdogan's victory, and Euronews provides insights into national challenges. Visual elements, like photographs, contribute significantly to framing events, offering nuanced political messaging. Micro-level analysis explores linguistic choices, syntax, and rhetoric, emphasizing the active voice to underscore leaders' agency. Deliberate use of the passive voice in presenting election results maintains a neutral tone. The way sentences are structured and the cause-and-effect connections help readers understand political developments by providing context. The study underscores the importance of media literacy in decoding political event representations, emphasizing the multifaceted complexities of media discourse. (shrink)

Feedback plays a crucial role in the writing processes. However, in the literature on foreign language writing, there is a dearth of studies that compare the effects of teacher feedback and automated feedback on both cognitive and psychological aspects of FL writing. To fill this gap, the current study compared the effects of teacher feedback and automated feedback on both revision quality and writing proficiency development, and perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of the feedback in English writing (...) among English learners as an FL in China. It also investigated students’ perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of the two types of feedback. The study adopted a mixed-methods design. The quantitative method collected the data through a pre-test and a post-test, which measured the participants’ English writing proficiency development; a writing task, which received either teacher feedback or automated feedback; and a close-ended questionnaire, which examined students’ perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of the feedback. The qualitative method collected the data through an open-ended questionnaire, which examined the participants’ perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of teacher feedback or automated feedback depending on the type of feedback they received. Chinese university EFLs in two English classes taught by the same English teacher participated in the study: one class received teacher feedback while the other received automated feedback using Pigaiwang. While the students in the two classes did not differ significantly on the pre-test of students’ writing proficiency, students who received teacher feedback scored significantly higher on revision than those who received automated feedback. Students in the teacher feedback class also had significantly higher ratings on perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use of the feedback than those in the automated feedback class. However, students in the automated feedback class obtained significantly higher scores on the post-test of the writing proficiency. The qualitative results identified three themes of strengths and two themes of weaknesses for the teacher feedback and the automated feedback, respectively. The results suggest that while teacher feedback has a more positive effect on the psychological aspect of FL writing, automated feedback may be more effective in developing FL writing proficiency in the long run. (shrink)

It can be a great challenge for second language learners to comprehend meanings that are implied in utterances rather than the surface meaning of what was said. Moreover, L2 learners’ attitudes toward pragmatic learning are unknown. This mixed-methods study investigates L2 learners’ ability to comprehend conversational implicatures. It also explores their beliefs about and intentions to develop this ability using Ajzen’s theory of planned behavior. A total of 498 freshmen from a public university in China participated in the study. Data (...) were collected using a web-based test, stimulated recall tasks and semi-structured interviews. Results show that the participants differed in recognizing the intended meanings. Complicated factors account for the variations. In addition to the types of implicature, learners’ beliefs about developing pragmatic comprehension also influence their learning intention, and subsequent performance. These beliefs include learners’ multi-layered, complex attitudes toward the outcomes of pragmatic learning, perceived self-efficacy beliefs regarding language proficiency and L2 cultural knowledge, actual behavioral control over opportunities and resources for pragmatic learning, and perceptions of less social pressure on pragmatic learning. The use of TPB may help language teachers and test designers to understand learners’ beliefs about L2 pragmatic learning in the English as a foreign language context. Understanding the factors influencing learners’ intention will help design more effective teaching curricula that may integrate pragmatic instruction and testing in the future. (shrink)

Currently, there is an increasing number of older population groups, especially in developed countries. This demographic trend, however, may cause serious problems, such as an increase in aging diseases, one of which is dementia whose main symptom consists in the decline of cognitive functioning. Although there has been ongoing pharmacological research on this neurological disorder, it has not brought satisfying results as far as its treatment is concerned. Therefore, governments all over the world are trying to develop alternative, non-pharmacological strategies/activities, (...) which could help to prevent this cognitive decline while this aging population is still healthy in order to reduce future economic and social burden. One of the non-pharmacological approaches, which may enhance cognitive abilities and protect against the decline in healthy older population, seems to be the learning of a foreign language. The purpose of this mini-review is to discuss recent findings about the effect of foreign language learning on the enhancement of cognitive functions among healthy older individuals. The findings, divided into three research areas, show that the learning of a foreign language may generate a lot of benefits for older individuals, such as enhancement of cognitive functioning, their self-esteem, increased opportunities of socializing, or reduction of costs. However, as Ware et al. (2017) indicate, any intervention program on foreign language learning should be well thought of and tailored to the needs of older people in order to be effective and avoid accompanying factors, such as older people’s anxiety or low self-confidence. Nevertheless, more empirical studies should be done in this area. (shrink)

Source: Author: Olena Znanetska In the current article the problem of foreign communicative competence of higher school students has been considered. The notion, the main point and the components of higher school students` foreign competence have been analyzed. The scientific works under the problem have been investigated. ]]>.

Background More than one in 10 of all prisoners in England and Wales are Foreign Nationals. This article discusses whether the research applications to one London prison are aimed at understanding a prisoner population characterised by significant multinational and multilingual complexity. Methods We studied all accessible documents relating to research undertaken at a women's prison between 2005 and 2009 to assess the involvement of Foreign National prisoners and women with limited English. The source of information was prison research (...) applications and protocols. We also looked at available final research reports and journal articles. Results Two key findings emerged from this study. First, studies at this prison frequently excluded Foreign National prisoners and women with limited English. Second, Foreign National prisoners were often clustered as a homogeneous category in the research reports reviewed. This is despite their diverse cultural backgrounds, their variable immigration status and their differing competence in English, all of which affect their lives. Conclusions The failure to include and/or identify social subgroups of the population can undermine the value of research, including, in the case of the study prison, funded health research. This can compromise associated needs assessments and service delivery, particularly important in already disadvantaged populations; this may encourage and/or perpetuate a range of health inequalities. There is a pressing need to examine cultural exclusion in other health and criminal justice settings, to assess the ways in which—and the extent to which—such exclusion may compromise the merit of proposed and completed health and social research. (shrink)

In recent years, foreign language learning has been proposed as a possible cognitive intervention for older adults. However, the brain network and cognitive functions underlying FLL has remained largely unconfirmed in older adults. In particular, older and younger adults have markedly different cognitive profile—while older adults tend to exhibit decline in most cognitive domains, their semantic memory usually remains intact. As such, older adults may engage the semantic functions to a larger extent than the other cognitive functions traditionally considered (...) the most important. Using anatomical measurements and a cognitive test battery, the present study examined this hypothesis in twenty cognitively normal older adults, who participated in a two-month Italian learning programme. Results showed that the immediate learning success and long-term retention of Italian vocabularies were most consistently predicted by the anatomical measures of the left pars orbitalis and left caudal middle frontal cortex, which are implicated in semantic and episodic memory functions. Convergent evidence was also found based on the pattern of cognitive associations. Our results are consistent with a prominent role of semantic and episodic memory functions in vocabulary learning in older learners. (shrink)

Influenced by the flowering of positive psychology in the field of foreign language acquisition research in recent years, the present study aimed to explore the perceived functions of playfulness, as a personality construct, among English as a foreign language learners. To this aim, an initial sample of 38 EFL learners were selected randomly from the private language institutes of Mashhad, the second largest city in Iran. They were interviewed about any perceived functions of playfulness in the EFL learning (...) context. A qualitative content analysis of the collected data led to the extraction of four categories: Fun and laughter, creativity, mastery orientation, and cultivating relationships. A further in-depth analysis of the categories and comparison with the functions of adult playfulness in psychology revealed that these four categories can be subsumed under two of the four structural components of adult playfulness; namely, other-directed playfulness and intellectual playfulness. The ability of EFL learners to turn language learning situations, tasks, and environment into enjoyable ones via their playfulness can have implications for the quality of their interpersonal interactions in class and eventually their language proficiency. The findings of this study can pave the way for the translation of the adult playfulness construct from developmental and personality psychology and family relations into the second language acquisition domain and its conceptualization in future research in this domain. (shrink)

Heidegger characterises the relationship between language and being as "language is the house of being", negating the idea that language is merely a tool ready to be used at hand. Drawing on this idea, as well as ideas from anthropology, pragmatics, and folklore studies, the author argues that "language is man's last homestead", meaning that man lives within language, has to live within language, and is governed by formulaic speech events. The author takes western classic works on the philosophy of (...) language and his own insights of language use rooted in traditional Chinese culture, in order to develop his own localized theory. In this title, the author explores the philosophical aspect of man's survival by presenting day-to-day exchange routines such as weddings and fortune telling dialogues in the Chinese context. Awarded the first prize for Academic Excellence in Philosophy and Social Sciences in Guangdong Province, and second prize in the second Xu Guozhang Award for Foreign Language Studies, this is a must-read for researchers interested in language philosophy and pragmatics. (shrink)

The present contribution offers an overview of a new area of research in the field of foreign language acquisition, which was triggered by the introduction of Positive Psychology (PP) ( MacIntyre and Gregersen, 2012 ). For many years, a cognitive perspective had dominated research in applied linguistics. Around the turn of the millennium researchers became increasingly interested in the role of emotions in foreign language learning and teaching, beyond established concepts like foreign language anxiety and constructs like (...) motivation and attitudes toward the foreign language. As a result, a more nuanced understanding of the role of positive and negative learner and teacher emotions emerged, underpinned by solid empirical research using a wide range of epistemological and methodological approaches. PP interventions have been carried out in schools and universities to strengthen learners and teachers’ experiences of flow, hope, courage, well-being, optimism, creativity, happiness, grit, resilience, strengths, and laughter with the aim of enhancing learners’ linguistic progress. This paper distinguishes the early period in the field that started with MacIntyre and Gregersen (2012), like a snowdrop after winter, and that was followed by a number of early studies in relatively peripheral journals. We argue that 2016 is the starting point of the current period, characterized by gradual recognition in applied linguistics, growing popularity of PP, and an exponential increase in publications in more mainstream journals. This second period could be compared to a luxuriant English garden in full bloom. (shrink)

The study is devoted to the organization of independent training of military specialists in a military university when teaching the Russian language. The purpose of the article is to prepare means for managing self-training, taking into account the creation of effective mechanisms for intensive training using modern interactive techniques that stimulate the motivational interest of military specialists in verbal communication and organizing their own speech. The article offers practical recommendations for mastering textual activity both under the guidance of a teacher (...) and in self-training, promoting the individualization of learning and self-management of the speech-thinking intellectual-cognitive process. To solve the problem, research methods such as applied and descriptive were used. The presented article actualizes the problem of organizing self-training in teaching Russian as a foreign language to foreign-speaking military personnel. Factors specific to a special purpose educational institution are analyzed, to which a teacher teaching RFL in short-term intensive courses must pay close attention. The idea is substantiated that it is necessary to take into account the specifics of special-purpose educational institutions when training, as well as to compensate for the limited language environment, which will entail the effectiveness of mastering language training programs for military specialists. The key problematic points on the way to preparing for the development of short-term language training programs are identified and characterized. The conditions and ways to eliminate difficulties in the process of learning the Russian language are identified and argued, the implementation of which will allow the teacher to effectively carry out language training. As a result of this study, the author concludes that the correct organization of independent work of foreign language students can increase the effectiveness of their learning of the Russian language, and also contribute to the formation of the personality of a specialist ready for self-development and self-education. (shrink)